Her earliest ambition was to become a teacher. Attaining that position before her fourteenth birthday, she continued in that career for thirty years, particularly in the department of literature. On December 12, 1858, she married George S. Bradley, a
theologian from Oberlin, then tutor in
Hillsdale, Michigan. Thereafter, she served as a pastor's wife or lady principal in the seminaries under her husband's charge in
Maine,
Wisconsin, and
Iowa. While in Wisconsin during the
civil war, her husband, as chaplain of the
22nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, accompanied General
William Tecumseh Sherman. While he was in that service, the last one of their three children died. Bradley returned to Hillsdale and engaged in teaching, At the close of the war, her husband resumed his old pastorate near
Racine, Wisconsin, and there for two years they worked. Then followed two years of seminary work in
Rochester, Wisconsin, and six in
Evansville, Wisconsin. There was born to them their last and only living child, Charles Clement.
Wilton, Iowa, was for the next five years the scene of their work. Then Mrs. Bradley began her public work for temperance. The Iowa agitation for prohibition roused her to action. Stepping into the ranks of the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), she organized and carried on a union, a temperance school, and lectured in her own town and vicinity. Later, in central and eastern
Kansas, where her husband's work led, her temperance efforts led to three years of invalidism, from which she has never fully rallied. In the field of literature, she was a prolific writer. Stories and poems followed each other rapidly, all being published in the standard periodicals of the day. When her husband became pastor of the Congregational Church in
Hudson, Michigan, she became
Michigan State superintendent of narcotics for the WCTU. In 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Bradley returned to Hillsdale, where in 1900, Mr. Bradley died. ==Death==